1. Field of the Invention
An embodiment of the present invention relates to a print management program, a print management device, a print management method, and a print system for managing print jobs.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a commercial printing industry, a commercial print service provider receives a printed material (such as a catalog, or an advertisement) from a customer, the commercial print service provider produces a customer's desired printed output material from the printing material, and the commercial print service provider receives compensation in return for delivering the printed output material to the customer. The commercial print service provider produces the printed output material by performing plural processes including the reception of the printing material and the delivery of the printed output material. The processes from the reception of the printing material to the delivery of the printed output material include prepress processes, such as the reception of the printing material from the customer, a reception of printing conditions for a printed output material, a color correction, a layout modification, and a correction of a binding position; post-press processes, such as proof printing for the customer to confirm the result of the prepress processes, printing and subsequent binding, and pressure bonding; and the delivery of the printed output material to the customer. Here, the number of the processes between the reception of the printing material and the delivery of the printed output material varies depending on a customer's desired printing condition for the printed output material.
In a conventional commercial printing industry, a commercial print service provider tends to receive an order for printed materials that require mass printing from a customer, and the commercial print service provider responds to the mass printing of the printed materials by the above described processes. Further, for the printed materials that require the mass printing, there are many cases in which a printing condition on the printed materials from a customer is fixed. In the conventional commercial printing industry, the commercial print service provider performs the mass printing under a determined single printing condition. After completing the lot printing, the printing condition is altered, and the mass printing under the altered printing condition is performed again. Through such a print cycle, the customer's desired printed output material is produced.
In the above printing cycle, plural processes tend to occur, when the printing condition is altered. Therefore, when the printing condition is not altered, the commercial print service provider can perform continuous printing in an ongoing process. Thus the mass printing can be efficiently performed.
Recently, in the commercial printing industry, a so-called “print-on-demand (POD) market”is emerging, where relatively small lots of printed materials are delivered to a customer in a short delivery time. In the POD market, orders from plural customers tend to occur. Consequently, in the POD market, printed materials submitted to a commercial print service provider and printing conditions on printed output materials are diversified.
Further, recently, digital printing has been widely used, and a computer has been widely used for controlling processes for producing printed materials. For example, technologies are emerging, such as a workflow for submitting a printed material as electronic data through a network and for controlling the above described plural processes. For example, in the workflow, printing operations in the plural processes are defined using a job ticket, which is called “Job Definition Format (JDF),” and the printing operations are controlled by a printing system.
In accordance with such a change in the printing environment, commercial print service providers have been introducing the computer technologies into the printing systems, so as to produce printed materials, in response to receiving orders for the printed materials. On the other hand, the commercial service providers have been required to set up printing systems that can handle diversified printing conditions for the printed materials from customers. Further, in order to produce diversified printed materials desired by the customers, the commercial print service providers have been required to respond in a system aspect, such as introduction of plural printer devices and peripheral devices, as well as in a process aspect, such as modification of the above described plural processes in a relatively short cycle.
The commercial print service providers have been required to respond as described above. Additionally, the commercial print service providers may be required to improve operational efficiency so as to increase profit. Measures for improving the operational efficiency include simplification of the processes.
In the production print (PP) business, as a prepress process, an imposition process and a print setting process are performed by using plural applications and digital front ends (DFE). In the print setting process, finisher processing includes more setting items, such as settings of stapling and hole-punching, as well as various settings of folding and cutting, compared to setting items of a multi-function peripheral (MFP). In a prepress process, a print preview image may be altered or use of an unavailable function may be constrained, depending on a capability of a post-processing (finishing) device.
Conventionally, as a technique for improving usability of the device, the following technique has been known. Namely, under a condition in which a specification of a job ticket that can be processed by a printing system may vary, a determination is made as to whether the job ticket transmitted to a device can be processed by a printing device (e.g., Patent Document 1 (Japanese Published Unexamined Application No. 2010-111100)).
In the PP business, not only a finisher, which can perform hole-punching and stapling, is connected to a printing device, but also various devices, such as a stand-alone device that can perform hole-punching and stapling, a stand-alone folding device, and a stand-alone cutting device, are combined to produce a single printed output material.
Therefore, when available functions are restricted only based on a capability of the printing device, even though the printing system includes the stand-alone device that can perform hole-punching and stapling, a print job of a printed output material, which may be output by using the whole printing system, may not be produced. Further, even if there are some functions that may not be performed simultaneously in the printing device by itself because of constraining settings, the functions may be performed in the whole printing system by utilizing the stand-alone devices that can perform hole-punching and stapling. However, in this case, the printing system may not notify an operator of the availability of the functions.
An embodiment of the present invention is developed in view of the above problems. An objective of the embodiment is to provide a print management program, a print management device, a print management method, and a print system that can perform print setting, in which the entire printing processes are reflected.